First Look - Safari 4 Beta

Apple announced and released the Safari 4 Beta this morning for all the world to download and try out. The latest Safari incarnation promises to be faster and easier to use than Safari 3.

I tried out the new browser this morning in between cans of Red Bull and the recording of our Tuesday Mac|Live Podcast. Here is what I learned:

- It's fast. Not just, "Oh hey, we tweaked some code fast." More like they pulled the old Ford Pinto engine out and replaced it with a super-charged BMW M3 engine with 110 octane fuel sloshing around inside. Without even doing a side-by-side comparison of Safari 3, the Safari 4 Beta screams out of the gate. It's faster than Firefox and Safari 3. Noticeably faster.

- Cover Flow. I'll admit it. I've never been a fan of Cover Flow. I don't use it in iTunes, the Finder or on any iPhones or iPods. Yet, in Safari when surfing through your history, I find actually useful.

- Top Sites. Great that it's dynamic if you want it to be. You can pin down selected sites and remove sites from your Top Sites page. It seems helpful and fun, but a true test will be if I continue to use it after two weeks. The star that appears when one of your Top Sites updates its contents. Nice!

- Tabs on Top. This is disorientating. After years of having tabs on the bottom with Firefox and Safari, they're suddenly on top.

On the whole, the newest Safari is slick and speedy. If you're not concerned about losing Safari 3, and you want to try out the latest browser technology, go ahead, enjoy the beta goodness of Safari 4.

Comments

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So far, I am liking Safari 4. It is fast, beautiful, and user friendly. However, the thing I found I missed is the way Safari 3, and earlier, shows the progress of loading pages. In the past, the URL bar would have a lovely blue bar that went across as the page loads. Safari 4 just has a spinning gear!
Anyone else miss this?

Noticed that movies in youtube won't play but just wait thou the progress bar is moving. I had to move the marker to make the movie play. Some slowness when in https:// websites. Still testing...that's why they call it beta ....guess.

Would like to see a review Chrome vs Safari thou! Maclife what say you?

Safari 4 is great but it created other issues today. First it would not open, it turns out that Glims was breaking it on my system. Removing that worked, but then mail kept crashing. The culprit in this case was Growlmail. (must be removed in user/library/mail/bundles as well as library/mail/bundles).
Then Rapidblog (a Rapidweaver plugin) broke, however the developer fixed it very quickly. So far so good since then.

Open up a new window and enter in the address that you want one of the spaces to be. Return to the original window and click edit. You can now drag the little icon to the left of the web address into the space you want. If it is not already, click the pushpin icon so it turns blue so that it stays with that address, and in that spot. Click done when you are finished.